O'Hare did not rest upon her release from prison, but immediately began a
nine-month lecture tour. These articles describe both her reception from Socialist
audiences and the content of her lectures, which now focused on reforming
prisons. In Document 12B, O'Hare recounted one of
the most disturbing experiences she faced in prison, being forced to bathe
in an unclean bathtub after a woman with syphillis had bathed.O'Hare
often used the graphic imagery of women suffering from syphillis, tuberculosis
and other communicable diseases in her attacks on the prison system. By stressing
that diseased women were not separated from "clean" women and that
disease transmission therefore occurred frequently within the prison, and
by reminding her audiences that the average woman prisoner's sentence was
two years, O'Hare hoped to arouse public outrage to demand segregating diseased
prisoners from healthy ones.

p. 1

WAVE
ON WAVE
OF CHEERS ECHO
O'HARE TRIUMPH

______________

3,000
Auditors Pledge to
Fight for Release of
Political Prisoners Behind Bars.

______________

PROUD
OF HER FIGHT

______________

Released
Prisoner Declares
She Was More "Dangerous"
in Jail Than on
Outside.

______________

Three thousand people gathered last night at the Lexington Opera House,
Lexington avenue and 51st street, to welcome Kate Richards O'Hare on
her release from the Federal penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., pledged
themselves to continue the fight for the release of 2,000 other political
prisoners still confined in the Federal jails.

Pandemonium broke loose the moment the tall and familiar figure of Mrs.
O'Hare appeared as she entered the rear of the hall. The audience rose
to its feet and cheered as she walked up to the platform. It continued,
each time from another part of the large hall, while Algernon Loc, who
was addressing the meeting when she entered, made repeated attempts
to resume his address every time the applause died down, but in vain.

It broke anew when she stepped to the platform, continuing for eight
minutes, while bouquets of roses were being brought up to her from all
parts of the hall.

"It was hard to go to jail," she declared, "but it would have been still
harder not to stand up for the things I believe. I am glad, I am proud,
I am happy. I am glad, proud, and happy that the powers that be considered
me a dangerous woman, sufficiently dangerous to lock up. And when they
shut me up, they found that I was 10 times as dangerous in jail than
out. Then they released me."

In spite of the intense heat, every seat in the vast hall was filled
long before the hour set for the opening of the meeting. The balconies,
box seats, and the orchestra were filled to capacity.

Marie MacDonald opened the meeting, which was called to welcome back,
she said, one who had served 14 months on a trumped-up charge. Her release,
she said, was as cowardly as was her confinement, as it failed to admit
that the government had committed a grievous miscarriage of justice.

Enemies Recognize Movement.

"We have driven them into a corner," Marie MacDonald declared. "Our
enemies now recognize that there is a great movement, a splendid and
growing Socialist movement, that has undertaken the defense of the Constitution,
and which stands not only for political democracy, but for far more
than that--industrial democracy."

Theresa Malkiel, introduced as one who had worked the hardest for the
release of political prisoners, said that Kate Richards O'Hare "was
sent to prison for our sins." Kate--as the speakers affectionately referred
to the rest of the evening--"was invincible in jail and out of jail,
in winter and summer, in every cause that needs a spokesman."

"Mr. Palmer thought he would be able to stifle her voice," Mrs. Malkiel
declared. "He has since learned his mistake. In jail she awoke a hundred
unfortunates who for the first time in their lives, perhaps, had a kind
word spoken to them.

Inconquerable.

"They cannot conquer women like Kate Richards O'Hare, they cannot conquer
men like Eugene V. Debs, they cannot conquer young girls like Mollie Steimer."
When the applause at the mentioning of the names of Debs and young Mollie
Steimer died down, she
p. 4
referred to the day a year and a half ago when at Webster Hall in this city
several hundred devoted Socialists gathered at bid of Kate Richards O'Hare
farewell.

"On that occasion she asked us to show our devotion by rededicating
ourselves to the task she had left undone, the erection of a stronger
and better Socialist movement," Mrs. Malkiel concluded. "We still have
that task before us. We must keep up the fight. Better than flowers,
better than gifts, let us devote ourselves to that task."

Algernon Lee, who followed Mrs. Malkiel, declared that the release of
Mrs. O'Hare was not due to any sudden appreciation by Attorney General
Palmer of the meaning of justice, or any realization on the part of
President Wilson of the significance of the word mercy.

"If they are considering pardons for others, if they have released Kate
Richards O'Hare, it is not because they respect either justice, or honor,
or mercy," Lee declared. "It is because the two years' debauch which
this nation has witnessed is coming to an end, because there is a return
to sanity in the public mind, the mind of the working class. People
are again beginning to speak their minds, though in some cases it is
only half-heartedly.

Tide Is Turning.

"Don't let us congratulate ourselves too soon," Lee warned. "The victory
is not yet won. The greatest of all the evils brought by the war has
been the destruction of ideals, the poisoning of channels of public
opinion, the assassination of the soul of peoples. This must be undone
before the victory will have been won. All that can be said now is that
the tide is turning."

Lee described the state of mind of the American people from the day
the organized mob spirit began to prevail, shortly after the declaration
of war in 1917, until a few months ago. He spoke of them as the long,
dreary months that seem to pass so slowly and with horror as a people
seemed to have gone mad.

"In all those months we might have kept quiet, we might have avoided
the persecution to which we who had apposed the war were subjected,"
he said. "It seemed a thankless and a vain task. But we refused to keep
quiet, regardless of the oppression and repression visited upon us.
Thanks to that, the tide is beginning to turn today."

It was at this point that the applause began to come from the rear of
the hall, and the audience looked there to see the figure of Kate Richards
O'Hare make its way down the aisle. The audience rose as one man, waving
hats and ribbons in her direction.

For five minutes the cheering continued, and finally Lee was permitted
to resume his talk.

"If
we are going to deserve to have Mrs. O'Hare out with us," he began,
"if we are going to deserve to have Debs out with us, if we are going
to deserve what we desire with regard to those who are paying the price
for their loyalty to their and our cause, if we are going to re-establish
liberty, we must do so as individuals, each one doing his full duty
each day that comes and goes.

"If our people are suffering in jail, it is because a majority of the
people have been ignorant enough, believing enough of what they had
been told, to stand for it. Before we conquer power we must conquer
the hearts of the men and women, and that can only be done by each one
in this hall going out and visiting three, four, five, or more people
daily and impressing them with out message. Then we will deserve and
get freedom."

Mrs. Malkiel's Welcome.

Mrs. Malkiel was then called upon by the chairman to deliver the address
of welcome.[A]

"We welcome you back to our city, Kate," Mrs. Malkiel began. "We would
give you the key to the city if we could but Mr. Hylan will not permit
us to do it. The Socialists of this city, state and nation, liberty-loving
people everywhere welcome you."

Before she was introduced, Marie McDonald made an appeal for funds with
which to conduct the pending campaign, which, she said, was indissolubly
bound with the amnesty campaign. Liberty Bonds, in denominations of
$100, $50, and bills ranging from $25 to $1, began to come from all
parts of the hall. In the 15 minutes that the collection lasted, more
than $1,000, it was estimated, was raised and pledged.

In the course of the collection a telegram from the Ladies' Waist and
Dressmakers' Union was read inviting Mrs. O'Hare to spend a vacation
at Unity House, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania.

The longest demonstration of the evening concluded when Mrs. O'Hare
finally managed to make herself heard.

"I feel absolutely certain that you are in a conspiracy with the prison
officials," she began. "They would not permit me to talk, and now I
have been trying to get the floor for a while and you have tried to
stop me."

"Only those who have been behind prison bars can realize what those
long, dreary days are, and how happy one is welcomed back to live, love,
and means more to me than words can tell. And it means so much to me
because I know it is given to me because I am symbolical of those who
were willing to face jail in defense of their convictions. They come
not only to me but to 'Gene, to Molly, and to all of them.

"It is not easy to go jail, to leave your beloved ones, your home, your
friends, and feel the prison gates clang behind you. But hard as it
is to go to prison, it is harder still not to stand up for the things
you believe in.

"I am sure no Socialist behind prison gates has any regrets. I have
not. I stood for what I believe is true. I was not punished in prison,
but educated in it. Down among the dregs of the earth, the despised,
the hunted, the caged, I learned lessons that no book can teach. It
is the lesson of faith in my fellow men and women. Some of them scared
a scar in my heart, and yet I would not have avoided them for anything
in the world."

She then began to recount her experiences in the 14 months that she spent
in jail, while the audience followed closely, occasionally with an ejaculation
at the horrors which she and other prisoners suffered and which many still
suffer in the jails of the country.

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A. Noted New York
City trade union and socialist activist, Theresa Malkiel. Browse authors reveals
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